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Sacred
Heart and St Margaret Mary, Dereham

East
Dereham, or Dereham as it is now at the whim of a
bureaucrat's pen, is a lovely little town. Apart
from the grand Anglican parish church of St
Nicholas there is nothing architectural that is
particularly of note, but it has a proud,
independent feel as befits a town that is so far
from anywhere else of any size. It is the closest
town to the centre of Norfolk, and as such may be
thought of as its heart.

I always
find it a mark of the civilisation of a small
town that the churches are open to visitors.
Thus, just as you can wander in to Dereham's main
churches, so you can in Holt, and Cromer, and
Wymondham, and Diss. But Thetford and Gorleston
keep theirs firmly locked - what does that tell
us about those towns, I wonder? And Norfolk is a
county where most of the Anglican parish churches
are open every day, but most of the Catholic
churches are not, I fear.

Sacred
Heart is a proud exception. Not only is it usually open,
there is a keyholder listed for visitors when it is not.
A simple single-celled brick building with what appears
to be an added apse, it is very homely compared to the
glories of St Nicholas, but warm and friendly with it.
The light wood and blue carpeting were pleasant in the
bright sunshine.

We arrived
here on the Wednesday of Holy Week, just as Mass was
ending. I have a passing acquaintance with many of the
Catholic Priests of the Diocese, and so I popped my head
into the sacristy door to say hello. As it turned out,
the Priest was a man I had not met before, but he was
very pleased to see us and asked us if we were on
holiday. We explained that we were visiting churches in
the area, and he shook his head sorrowfully. "I am
afraid that you will find that some of the churches
around here are locked", he mourned. "I simply
cannot understand it. I think it is shocking - shocking
- to lock people out of the House of God."

We agreed
with him fervently, but I didn't have the heart to tell
him quite how many of the culprits are Catholic churches.
A few weeks earlier, the Bishop of East Anglia, Michael
Evans, had asked in his Lenten Diocesan Letter for
churches to make themselves more welcoming to outsiders.
I had written to Bishop Michael to say that I agreed, and
that one way to do this would be to make sure that the
churches were kept open. I didn't get a reply.